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Wednesday, March 22, 2017

God as the Ideal Observer

I am continuing trying to write something
every day. I hadn’t really thought much about what I was going to write until
now. So here goes . . . .

I had a brief but interesting conversation
today about God and whether or not he has a “view from nowhere.” The idea is
that, contrary to modernist suppositions, one really can’t be 100% objective,
with absolutely no presuppositions or perspective whatsoever. There really is
no view from nowhere, where nothing and no one has any influence whatsoever on
how we see things. We all have a worldview, implicit or not. So suppose God is
particularly situated and is not perfectly objective, where “perfectly
objective” apparently means “without a worldview.” How can God then know for
sure that he knows all things? Couldn’t he be mistaken, simply being beholden
to his worldview?

I think not, and for two (what I take to
be) decent reasons. First, God is not like us. He does not have to gain
knowledge as a finite knower. He knows all true propositions innately. Thus, he
would not have to worry about whether or not he is mistaken in a given
situation; he knows that he is not. Second, I take it that the perfectly
objective observer is one where he has access to all the facts, amongst other
things. God more than has access to all of the facts concerning a matter. He
just is in every possible world, as the necessary
being. God could not fail to exist in any circumstance.

Out of any possible scenario, God knows
everything about it, including how it might and even would actually turn out.
Further, God is the locus of everything good, so he knows and will do what is
good, for only good comes from God (that is, God does not perform any acts of “evil,”
where “evil” is contrary to God’s nature). So I think God fits this ideal
observer in objectivity, and even though he has a nature, it’s not one capable
of being shared or limited by context. Instead, it just is the foundation for
all reality.